Inevitable
by coveryoureyes
Summary: It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Suzanne was supposed to be the token human moral support for her vampire best friend. It had never even occurred to her that a hit-and-run could be the thing that changed that. Short alternate spin off of 'The Bystander' with Damon/Suzanne as end game
1. Chapter 1

It was so… mundane when it happened. Nothing special or supernatural. Instead it was the sort of thing that would be featured in a blurb on the third page of the local newspaper, only to be forgotten a week or two later.

Suzanne was glad that she barely remembered it – only the last few seconds or so. It was horrifying enough to wake up on the side of the road in a shallow ditch, her dogs beside her while her own injuries were gone. Stupidly, it took her a few moments to realize what had happened.

The sun was setting, and Suzanne scrambled backwards away from the street when the bodies of her dogs – oh god, they were _bodies_ – made her feel a pang of thirst. Letting out a strangled shriek, Suzanne shakily tried to stand.

She had been hit by a car while walking Louie and Killer, and the person had kept driving. Suzanne hadn't – she hadn't even been close to the road, and it was a Tuesday afternoon. Were they drunk? Were they _texting_? There were tire marks shredding the grass five feet off of the road, so clearly they'd swerved and had sped away.

Suzanne wrapped her arms around herself, hunching in on herself and trying to steady her hyperventilating so she wouldn't become light-headed or pass out. Could she still have panic attacks after dyi –

 _Suzanne was dead._

She'd died and come back from death only because this morning she'd sipped from the cup of Damon's blood that he'd left with her a week ago after she'd scraped both of her knees pretty badly.

This wasn't supposed to happen. This wasn't fair, it wasn't _fair_ , it wasn't –

Suzanne didn't know how to feel when the car came around the curve of the road, immediately pulling over. What was she supposed to say? What kind of excuse could she give them to make them go away and leave her alone until she could call Damon, having decided a moment ago that it was the logical thing to do?

The woman driving seemed to throw herself out of the SUV while a teenage girl remained in the passenger side, wide-eyed as she took in Suzanne, whose clothes were still covered in her own blood. The woman who had pulled over looked incredibly concerned and approached slowly, speaking in a calm and soothing voice.

"Are you okay? Can I call for help?"

Suzanne didn't feel in control of her body as her thoughts became muffled.

When she came back to her senses, the first thing she noticed was that somehow the passenger door of the car had been ripped off. Two bodies were in pieces at her feet. A second later, her vervain tattoo started to viciously burn her back, and Suzanne _screamed_.

* * *

Damon stared down at his phone, annoyed that Suze was calling him for the third time in a row. He was trying to get drunk and find someone to feed on. She had been a little bit careful around him ever since the reveal a week ago that Katherine had never been in the tomb. It had been welcome the first day or so, but now it felt stifling.

Deciding that he might as well talk to her instead of putting it off, Damon let out an annoyed sigh and picked up the call before flatly saying, "What?"

The first few seconds of silence on the other end of the line irritated him further and he nearly hung up before Suze spoke.

"I need you to pick me up on the bend of the road on Laurent Drive."

Damon felt confused, unsure why she'd be demanding that he haul ass to Springfield instead of calling a tow truck or something, but he figured maybe she didn't want to spend the money on the service. Before he could ask and clarify, she said in a blank voice, "Bring a shovel."

The dial tone snapped Damon out of the spiral his thoughts had taken and he threw himself out of the stool, despite knowing that he shouldn't be moving so fast in front of humans. He didn't bother getting the shovel she asked for, instead he drove 30 miles per hour over the speed limit to meet her where she'd said. The only thought that could come to him was that Louie had died and needed to be buried. The dog was too heavy for Suze to carry anywhere far, and nothing else made sense.

But fifteen minutes later when he screeched to the side of the road where Suze was sitting on the edge of the pavement next to an unfamiliar car he realized something much, much worse had taken place.

Suze stood slowly, revealing clothing that was covered with blood. Speeding over to her, he immediately gripped her shoulders and forced her to look at him. When her eyes met his she seemed entirely unfocused, as if unable to recognize him.

"Are you hurt? Suze? Suze, _answer me_."

She then seemed to realize for the first time that he was speaking to her. When she answered, her voice was even but distant.

"The alcohol thing, you know? No impulse control, basically an addict. I moved them already to make it easier." Her eyes shifted, staring over his shoulder towards the edge of the woods. With a pit of dread growing in his stomach, he slowly turned around to see what she was looking at.

The bodies of her dogs were laid beside the pieces of two human corpses.

For a second, it didn't make sense, and Damon wondered why Suze hadn't been attacked by the same thing that had killed these people. But when he turned back towards her, she had an out of place expression on her face, like a mixture of pity and sadness.

When she whispered out her next words, time stopped.

"I died."

* * *

Suzanne wondered how long it would take a vampire to starve to death. The tomb vampires had still been alive after a century and a half. So a few hundred years, maybe. If she didn't move would it be faster?

Damon had been able to force feed her a half a bag of blood in the last week, but she hadn't had anything else. She didn't _want_ anything else.

It was strange, how different the world felt now, how foreign her own body was to her. Suzanne had used the bathroom a few minutes after Damon had carefully carried her into the boarding house. But then Suzanne had stripped down to her underwear and bra and wiped off what blood she could with a damp towel in silence. She'd closed the drapes, curled up in Damon's bed, and hadn't left.

Suzanne had been prepared for Damon's anger. It was expected. It didn't make it hurt any less when he said she was a coward or pathetic when she wouldn't drink any blood. But she just _couldn't_. Everything felt heavy and blurry – most of her days were spent in a near-sleeping state. Whenever she focused her thoughts she could only focus on the expression of the teenage girl when she'd seen Suzanne rip her mother's head off. She hadn't killed them. She'd _mauled_ them. Slaughtered them. Mutilated them.

What Suzanne _hadn't_ prepared for was Damon's sadness and desperation. When he'd pleaded with her to drink in a hoarse voice she'd tried so hard to make herself get up, to feel something other than self-disgust.

It startled her when Damon opened the door slowly. Suzanne made herself turn over to meet his eyes. He looked miserable. She expected him to start speaking but instead he walked around the bed to the side her back was facing. Wordlessly, she heard him kick off his shoes before the duvet was shifted. A moment later Damon was curled around her, his chest pressed to her back. He shifted them around, reaching an arm underneath the pillow while the other curled over her. Suzanne barely kept herself from flinching when he laced their fingers together and gently squeezed her hand.

Neither of them spoke, and the two laid there in silence, their breathing eventually syncing up. Damon finally broke her out of her haze when he buried his face into her neck. As he started whispering to Suzanne she felt a pang of shock when his voice wavered.

"You can't do this to yourself. I know you didn't want this, and I know it's my fault. If you want to leave and never see me again, that's okay."

Suzanne felt a tear fall onto her skin, but Damon's voice grew stronger and his arms tightened around her when he continued, "But I need you to be okay. You have to be okay, you deserve it. We can help you, I swear."

At that, everything that had been crushing her, pressing in on her chest and filling her head shattered.

Suzanne's fingers tightened around his and before she was overcome with sobs she choked out, "I'm so _hungry_ , Damon."

Suzanne broke, and Damon held her together as best he could.


	2. Chapter 2

_Three Months Later_

It wasn't easy. There was no denying that. It had taken nearly a week to convince the Bennett witch to make Suze a daylight ring, and in that time Stefan and Damon had been doing their best to help Suze get under control.

She was a Ripper. When they'd first taken her around humans they'd both had to restrain her before quickly escorting her away. Now she'd adjusted to being around _very small_ crowds.

She wouldn't ever be able to feed from people without someone there to pull her back. But Suze had adjusted fairly well to blood bags.

Damon was actually the problem the last couple of weeks.

It wasn't his hunting that was causing his recent issues - it was that he didn't know how to act around Suze anymore. They were together almost constantly now instead of seeing each other a couple times a week. They fought all the fucking time now that they were cohabitating. Suze's pettiness and sarcasm had been heightened, to _everyone's_ dread.

But the thing was, they were forced to make up pretty soon after their fights since they lived together. And it wasn't only bad qualities that had been enhanced – Suze's unwavering care for those she liked and her protectiveness had as well.

Damon had thought that he and Suze knew everything about each other, or at least almost everything. But now most nights ended with the two of them laying down on opposite sides of his bed while facing each other. They stayed up whispering about their sincere thoughts in between the rambling and fun conversations they'd always had that had made him first joke about being 'platonic soulmates'. That joke was now something he regretted immensely.

And – fuck, fuck, _fuck_. Damon wanted to _hate_ Suze.

Suze was his best friend. His only real friend in the century and a half he'd been alive. And he knew it was the same for her, especially now that she was isolated from her parents and older brother. Suze was _depending_ on him, and trusting him to help her. And Damon had gone and fucked everything up.

He hadn't even realized what happened at first. When he'd met Katherine he was immediately drawn to her and besotted. But one day as Suze was tossing blackberries in the air and trying to see if she could catch them between the points of her fangs he wanted to wrap his arms around her and just hold her. Suze didn't need protecting, but he still wanted to be the one to keep her safe – he wanted to be the reason she was happy.

Damon wanted to reach inside of himself and claw his feelings out. Because he had loved Suze for almost a year, but for the last two weeks Damon had been trying to deal with the fact that he was in love with Suzanne Elizabeth Sinclair.

* * *

Suzanne stared at the microwave and struggled not to pull it open. There was twenty seconds left on the timer. She could keep her shit together for twenty seconds.

Ten seconds later, she yanked the mug of blood out, spilling a bit over the side, and started chugging it. It was a touch too cold and would have been perfect after another ten seconds of being warmed, but fuck it, she was hungry.

She revised her internal monologue to "fuck Damon" when he snorted from where he sat at the kitchen table and mockingly said, "Behold the paradigm of patience, ladies and gentlemen."

Without bothering to open her eyes, which Suzanne had closed in satisfaction, she gave him the finger. Damon laughed in response and when she finished her drink she turned to him to ask, "Have you ever accidentally gone in public with the blood-equivalent of a milk mustache?"

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a look in response that clearly conveyed his opinion on the idiocy of her question. Damon and his stupid fucking eyes had been causing _problems_.

Suzanne was in love with Damon, she'd known that for about a month. Which really fucking sucked. It had taken a while to assign a name to what she'd been feeling, and it was only the idiotic thought – _I want to kiss his face_ – that made her realize what was going on. Of course she'd immediately fled the house, which ended up being a bad idea when she came across two teenagers in the woods making out. Suzanne had hidden the bodies, and she was fairly sure that Damon and Stefan never knew what had happened.

Christ, _she_ barely knew what had happened. The loss of control was infuriating. Sure, Suzanne had never really had her shit together, but that was because of her own stupid decisions. Suddenly losing her senses – similar to a night of blacking out from booze, actually – only to wake up with dead bodies in front of her was terrifying.

Again, she knew she was a horrible person for only being terrified about what was happening to _herself_ instead of the people she had fucking _killed_. When she was human Suzanne had always joked that she was a sociopath, but now the description hit a little too close to home. Some of her good qualities seeped into her actions, but extremely possessive care for her friends and amusement at the world probably didn't make up for the sudden influx of cruelty and disregard for everyone she didn't like or know.

Suzanne was honestly happy just spending time with Damon and joking around the way they always had. But there had been a few times – usually when they were both really drunk – that his eyes had looked soft and she'd nearly blurted it out.

The bigger issue was that she _knew_ Damon. He'd freak out and panic and convince himself that he had to shut her out. Suzanne was actually completely okay with him not loving her in the same way. After all, he was still one of the most important people in her life and she treasured that. Now she had forever to get over it, and she was no Bella Swan. Suzanne hadn't ever been in love, but she was sure that she could fall out of it in the next few months. Maybe her love for Damon had been one of the things that had become exaggerated after she had turned.

But his stupid. Fucking. Eyes.

Damon's ridiculously pretty face sometimes made her think that there was a chance that he might like her as more than a friend, too. Of course he'd always been attractive, but it didn't phase her. Suzanne had always found that when you became close to someone you sort of forgot what they looked like, whether they were hot or not. That risk-reward ratio of vomiting her feelings, however, was fucking awful. Suzanne wasn't going to jeopardize their friendship unless she was more than 87% sure that Damon might feel the same.

If she told him it might suck for her, and it would taint the only real friendship Damon had in his life. It wouldn't be fair to either of them.

Yeah, there were… moments. But then again, the two of them had always been weirdly in sync, even when her feelings had been really, truly platonic up until a month ago. So Suzanne was more than happy to continue loving him and being the best friend he deserved.


End file.
